


petsmart is about to make a killing.

by oh_no_oh_dear



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Animals, Fluff, Gen, Multi, Pets, beefybuckyexchange17, so many fluff, very brief mention of animal testing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 10:37:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10216160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_no_oh_dear/pseuds/oh_no_oh_dear
Summary: Wherein Earth's Mightiest Heroes are big ol' softies because ANIMALS!





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nightmaresinwintah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightmaresinwintah/gifts).



Bucky’s first thought upon waking up was that the human body wasn’t meant to be wedged onto a couch with 2 other people. His second thought was that whoever had just kneed him in the back of the head was a  _ jerk _ .   
  
Almost as if she’d heard his internal monologue, Natasha shuffled behind him.    
_       
    "Answer the phone before I make you eat it,” _ she murmured, defaulting to Russian in her half-asleep state. Sam, who was somehow curled up behind Nat, made a sound of displeasure at being woken up by the trill of Bucky’s phone and she murmured quietly, soothing his nerves. He’d had a rough night (hence them staying up all night and watching  _ Blue Planet _ on Netflix) and needed all the sleep he could get.    
  
Bucky, meanwhile, was squinting at the bright screen of his phone, which was the only source of light in the living room. Unlisted number.    
  
    “Barnes,” he rasped, his sleep-hoarse voice rough. There was a short pause, the crackle of static, and then the sound of a man sighing.    
  
_     “Barnes,” _ Fury said, sounding a little worse for wear himself. “Don’t let anyone know you’re talking to me,” he quickly added. Bucky snapped his mouth shut (he’d been about to blurt ‘Director Fury?’ aloud.)    
_ “Is Rogers around?” _ Fury asked, his voice oddly hushed. Nick Fury might be the world’s greatest spy, but he wasn’t the sort to feel the need to whisper.    
  
    “No,” Bucky replied, equally quietly. He glanced behind him, but Natasha and Sam were already wrapped around each other again, Sam with a tiny frown on his face. Bucky slowly extricated himself from the tangle of limbs and hitched his pyjama pants higher up his hips. If he strained to listen, he could hear the shower going upstairs, which meant Steve had just finished his morning workout (Bucky never really saw the point in working out if you didn’t  _ have _ to, but Steve was weird and seemed to enjoy the physical exertion.)

“Prob’ly got about 10 minutes,” he continued, shuffling out onto the tiny balcony and carefully sliding the glass door shut behind him. The sun was just barely starting to rise, the air chill against his bare chest.   
  
_“5 more than I need, then,”_ Fury said. He cut to the chase. “I need you for a mission, Barnes.”  
  
    “I figured. What for?”  
  
Nick Fury hesitated, another thing he didn’t often do (along with whispering.) _“We’ve got a hostage situation.”_ Bucky straightened up, fully awake now. People were being held, and Fury had trusted _him_ enough to come to him directly.  
  
    “How many people?” Bucky asked. He already began mentally calculating how long it would take to get the others awake and kitted out; he’d have to fill Steve in so that he could run point, and Natasha would want to come, but if Sam wasn’t feeling his best (which he’d try to hide, because he was stubborn like that) she would be torn between staying with him and going on the mission, and--  
  
 _“Barnes.”_  
  
Bucky hadn’t caught a word Fury had said.   
  
    “Uh. Sorry, Director. Can you repeat?”  
  
Fury muttered something about not having enough coffee for this mess, but he repeated himself.   
_“I_ ** _said_** _, the hostages aren’t technically human.”_  
  
Bucky paused in his movements; he’d been working the kinks out of his back, rolling the stiffness out of his left shoulder while talking to Fury.  
“They’re… what, mutants?”  
  
 _“No.”_  
  
    “Inhumans?”  
  
 _“No, not Inhumans. It’s A.I.M., which you’d’ve known if you were listening, Barnes.”_  
  
    “Sorry. Wait, A.I.M. is in danger?” _Hell with_ _‘em_ , he thought, a little viciously. Advanced Idea Mechanics had been a pain in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s (and more importantly, _his_ ) butt for months now.   
  
_“_ ** _No_** _, Barnes. They’ve got captive. Animals,”_ Fury repeated. _“They’re doing some not-so-kosher things over there.”_  
  
    “Like… animal testing?”  
  
 _“Got it in one, Barnes. Well, not one. More like three. But you got the gist.”_  
  
    “You want us to go save animals?” Bucky’s left hand curled into a fist, the thought of a sketchy scientific organization experimenting on unwilling subject perhaps hitting a little _too_ close to home.   
  
_“Damn right I do,”_ Fury said, and he sounded… a lot angrier than Bucky would have expected. _Nick Fury, animal lover?_   
_“The problem is that I’m the Director, but it’s not like ‘Hey, we’re gonna use S.H.I.E.L.D. resources to go rescue bunnies’ is gonna fly with the higher-ups.”_ _  
_  
“There are higher-ups?” Bucky asked, genuinely a little surprised. He couldn’t imagine anyone telling Nick Fury what to do. Ever.  
  
 _“There are_ ** _always_** _higher-ups,”_ Fury muttered. _“Anyway-- Agent Hill and I have uncovered some pretty messed up stuff. We think they’re trying to create supers.”_  
  
    “Using the animals as trial runs,” Bucky grit out. Fury hummed his agreement before giving him the mission details; locations, key scientists, possible key codes.   
  
Before he hung up, Bucky had to ask. “Director… why d’you care so much, anyway? About the animals?” _Most people wouldn’t give a damn._  
  
 _“I don’t want these experiments getting into the wrong hands,”_ Fury replied. Then, in a quieter voice, he added, _“They didn’t ask for any of this. They have no idea what’s happening to them,they’re probably scared, and they got no idea how to get out.”_ He paused and huffed out a laugh.   
  
_“And I got a soft spot for bunnies.”_  
  


* * *

  
By the time he came back in, Steve had already settled into Bucky’s abandoned spot on the couch, cup of coffee in hand. He and Natasha were talking in low voices, Sam nodding sleepily at something Steve murmured. Bucky took a deep breath and steeled himself; it was the weekend, and they were pretty tired from the work week, so he really didn’t want to interrupt their time together, but--

  
    “You up for a mission?” he said as a greeting as he stepped back indoors, welcoming the warmth. Sam immediately started nodding, even as he tried to stifle a huge yawn; Nat said “Nope,” popping the ‘p’ for emphasis; Steve took another sip of his coffee, one eyebrow quirked.    
  
    “What mission?” Steve asked, beckoning Bucky over to sit with them. Bucky sank on the floor instead, not feeling up to burrowing for room on the large, yet currently cramped couch. He leaned his head back, resting against someone’s leg-- Steve’s? -- and then told them about the mission. It was gonna be a hard sell; unpaid, weekend overtime; possibly messy extraction (it wasn’t as though any of them were trained veterinarians.)   
  
    “Why’d Fury call you instead of me?” Steve asked, not sounding annoyed so much as genuinely curious. Bucky grinned.    
  
    “He needed someone who’d take the time to make a plan instead of getting all mad and headbutting his way through a wall,” Bucky responded.    
  
    “That was  _ once, _ ” Steve said loudly over the laughter of the other three. He’d never live that down.    
  


* * *

  
    “Should I have gotten a leash?” Steve asked, turning in the seat. Natasha swatted his shoulder, barely looking away from her tablet. 

  
    “Eyes on the sky, Rogers.” Something registered and she glanced up. “A  _ leash _ ?”   
  
    “Steve’s hoping to adopt a dog from A.I.M.,” Sam snickered from behind them. He and Bucky were checking over the weapons: non-lethal rounds for the humans, low-strength tranquilizers for their four-legged hostages in case they needed them. Bucky slotted the last round into his tranquilizer rifle, exchanged an amused look with Sam.    
  
    “Yeah, Steve’s been on about a damn dog ever since I’ve known him. Allergies alone woulda killed him before.”   
  
Natasha’s mouth twitched. “I hear poodles are hypoallergenic, Steve. We could get a poodle. Little tiny poodle.”   
  
    “All dogs are good dogs, Natasha,” Steve said evenly. (He’d recently had a run-in with a particularly territorial toy poodle; not wanting to hurt the creature, he’d opted to sprint away from it. There were pictures. Apparently it was a ‘hashtag’ on ‘Tweeter,’ whatever the hell that meant.)   
  
Bucky was watching Sam, who had just pressed his fingers to his temple.    
“Wilson, you don’t have to do this if you’re still feeling--”   
  
    “Shut up, Barnes.” Sam’s smile was sudden, but it filled Bucky with warmth like it always did. “How the hell you gonna have an animal rescue mission and not have  _ the Falcon _ on your team, man?”   
  
Bucky rolled his eyes.   
  
    “Did you get it? Falcon? Like the bird. And we’re saving animals,” Sam pressed, raising his voice slightly. Right on cue, Natasha joined in; they two of them were great lovers of excruciatingly bad jokes.    
  
    “I hope we’re not being led on a wild  _ goose _ chase,” Natasha drawled, making Steve groan loudly.    
  
    “Maybe we’re being  _ gull _ -ible about this mission?” Sam mused, ignoring Bucky as he mimed choking himself.   
  
    “You know what they say, live your life without  _ egrets _ .”  
  
    “ _ Toucan _ say that again, Romanoff.”    
  
    “If you two don’t quit that,” Steve broke in, “I’m going to  _ tern _ this jet around.” He wasn’t able to keep the tremble of laughter out of his voice, and Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose. Truly, he was outnumbered; Natasha looked downright proud, and Sam was wheezing with laughter (seriously, he loved terrible jokes.)   
  
    “ _ Et tu _ , Rogers?”   
  
    “If you can’t beat ‘em,” Steve shrugged. His posture straightened and he pressed several blinking buttons on the flight console. “Store the jokes for later, though. We’re here.”   
  
    “ _ Stork _ the jokes for later?” Bucky muttered, realizing too late what he’d done.    
  
    “Buck,  _ no _ .”   
  
    “I thought he’d be the last holdout for sure!”   
  
    “Welcome to the hive mind, Barnes.”  
  


* * *

  
    “Agent Lopez?” Steve asked, frowning at the tall woman who was crouching behind a low wall. She gestured for him to keep moving, but her voice soon came over the comms.   
  
    “Sorry, Cap, sir. Had to keep under cover. Fury told us about the mission--”  
  
    “What, we can’t handle a couple nerdy scientists?” Bucky muttered, accepting one of Natasha’s hairties. They both whipped their shoulder-length hair into no-nonsense ponytails as Sam lowered his red-tinted goggles and Steve finished buckling his helmet.   
  
    “Well… I dunno bout a couple, sir,” another voice broke in. Sounded like Ohta. “Hill got some intelligence. Might be upwards of 500 A.I.M. employees to get through, sir.”  
  
Bucky heaved a sigh. He should’ve known better than to think this would be _easy._   
  
    “You’re all volunteering?” Steve asked, using hand signals to split the team off towards the different entry points.   
  
    “ _Yes, Captain, ‘bout 50 of us here,”_ yet another new voice piped up. McCallins.   
  
    “Not that I’m questioning your dedication to the cause,” Sam said, his voice low and amused, “but 50 agents working for free on a Saturday?”  
  
 _“I got two dogs,”_ Lopez murmured.   
  
_“I’m vegan. Not gonna let animals get hurt.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“My cat just had kittens… when I heard about this sick little setup--”_  
  
    “I get it,” Bucky interrupted gently. They had to concentrate in order to get this done with minimal injury. Who knew S.H.I.E.L.D. had so many animal lovers?   
  


* * *

  
Bucky took his time lowering the unconscious lab tech to the ground, his eyes scanning the brightly lit room. The man hadn’t put up a fight of any kind; in fact, upon seeing the Winter Soldier calmly enter the lab, his eyes had rolled back and he’d fainted on the spot. Smart move, to be honest. 

  
Bucky didn’t like hurting people. This guy had… fallen asleep. Easy enough; Bucky tied his arms and legs and took his phone. He didn’t need to have his search for their animal captives interrupted by a call for help.    
  
The problem was that the room was spotless. White walls, white floors, rows upon rows of silver work desks. The man Bucky had indirectly knocked out had clearly been putting in some overtime over the weekend and now there was no one left to interrogate about the damn code to open the--  
  
_ Wait, where’s the exit door? Ahh, hell. _ Bucky moved forward cautiously, warily watching for any movement out of the corner of his eye. The blueprints had indicated that there should be a hidden exit somewhere… along… the blank and perfectly unmarked white wall at the far end of the room. Bucky was going to have to go right up to the thing and scrabble along the wall with his bare hand, feeling for any grooves or imperfections. Like a damn raccoon. Steve was never going to let him hear the end of this when he saw the security footage.   
  
Speak of the devil--   
  
    “ _ Got into Section 6, found a lot of li’l fellas happy to see me, yes you are--” _ Steve’s voice definitely skirted ‘baby talk’ over the comms, and Bucky snorted. His best friend might be the biggest weenie on earth when it came to dogs and kids.    
  
    “Rogers, get it together. Are they secure?” Bucky muttered, stilling when his fingers finally grazed a slightly rougher patch of wall.    
  
_     “--and we’re gonna find you all good homes, and you-- uh. Yes.” _ Steve cleared his throat, and Natasha suddenly broke in, sounding oddly breathless.    
  
_     “If Steve’s getting a dog, I’m getting a pet too.” _   
  
    “Nat, what?” Bucky’s face lit up; he’d finally activated the correct pressure points and the section of the wall he was standing in front of slid soundlessly to the side.    
“Steve’s not getting a dog. And since when do you want a pet? You said no when I asked before.”   
  
_     “Steven Grant Rogers is walking out of here with a dog, James. I guarantee it. And I said  _ **_no_ ** _ to  _ **_you_ ** _ having a pet, because for months you were jumpy flinging a knife at anything that moved too fast.” _   
  
    “That was once--”   
  
_     “Twice,” _ Sam added, sounding strained as if he was carrying something heavy.    
  
    “Okay, twice. And I said I was sorry to you both!”   
  
Bucky let the fingers of his flesh hand rest on his tranquilizer gun, but when he saw the creatures nestled in the huge glass tanks, he lowered his hand. “What the hell--”   
  
_     “Anyway, Rogers is getting a dog. Bet you $20,”  _ Natasha said. Before waiting for a reply, she breathed out “ _ Oh aren’t you beautiful? Oh, you’re coming with me… _ ”   
  
    “Natasha, Steve isn’t getting a-- Rogers, dammit, no dogs! Natasha? What are you getting? Natasha?” No answer came, although Bucky would still hear Nat cooing sweetly to whatever animal had caught her eye (and that was, in itself, a little scary. Natasha didn’t  _ coo. _ Well. At Sam, a little, but again: those two were weird.)   
“Steve. Steve--” he just barely resisted calling him ‘you jackass,’ but he had to maintain  _ some _ mission decorum. Steve was quiet, too, although Bucky could definitely hear the muffled sounds of dogs barking happily.  _Friggin' Rogers._   
  
    “Sam,” he huffed out, lifting down one of the tanks and peering at the sleepy animals inside. “Sam, tell me  _ you’re _ not getting a pet. The apartment’s gonna be overrun, for Christ’s sake.”  
  
_     “Yeah, I’m thinkin’ no on that one,” _ Sam said dryly. A high-pitched, yet incredibly loud  _ mew _ echoed across the comms.  _ “Man, I’m covered in cat hair. I hate cats. You! Stop-- get off Redwing, that’s not a toy-- _ ”  
  
Bucky snorted as he set the last tank outside. “At least someone in this household is sane, Wilson. Figured you’d be more of a bird guy, anyway.”   
  
_     “Ha. Ha. Ha.” _   
  
    “Oh,  _ now _ you don’t like bird jokes?” Bucky said. He looked up sharply when people came into the room, but it was just a handful of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that had come to assist with the safe transportation of the animals.    
  
    “This is the last of them, sir,” one of the agents said, making to heft the tank with the help of two others (not everyone had super soldier strength, after all.) Bucky glanced into the glass tank. A pair of shiny little black eyes looked back at him.    
  
_ I’m not getting a pet. I’m not getting a pet. _   
  
The creature emitted the tiniest squeak.    
  
    “Dammit. Hang-- hang on…” Bucky said, moving towards the agents. “I’m just gonna … take this one.”   
  
    “Sir?”   
  
    “I’m taking this one with me.”   
  
    “Not that there’s a problem, sir, but why?”   
  
Bucky felt his cheeks go a little warm. “Because I  _ wanna _ , okay? Whadyawant from me?” He could see the agents struggling to keep their faces straight as they nodded and left the room, but he didn’t care, dammit. If Steve could get a dog and Natasha could get a... whatever, he could get this, right?   
  


* * *

  
    “You got a dog. Of  _ course _ you got a dog _ , _ ” Bucky sighed, moving hastily away from the small dog struggling to get out of Steve’s hands.    
  
    “He’s not gonna take up much room!” Steve cajoled, barely exerting any energy despite firmly keeping the dog from lunging at Bucky. “His name’s Grindelwald.  
  
    “His name’s  _ what? _ ”   
  
    “Dunno, it’s what was on his cage.”   
  
    “Grindelwald,” Sam said, strutting by them and doing his best to ignore the fact that several small kittens were still attached to his chest, “is from  _ Harry Potter _ , and these A.I.M. jerks are  _ nerds _ .”   
  
    “And yet you immediately got the reference. What does that make you, Wilson?” Nat asked, poking her head  out of the quinjet. Sam made a face at her as an agent gently disentangled the kittens’ tiny claws from his armour.    
  
    “Makes me culturally aware, Romanoff.”   
  
    “Sounds like somethin’ a  _ nerd _ would say,” Bucky murmured as he passed Sam. The little bundle of fur tucked stealthily under his arm squeaked audibly, and Sam looked down.   
  
    “Barnes, what the hell is that?”   
  
    “It’s not a freakin’ dog, at least!” Bucky deflected, gesturing at Grindelwald, who was wriggling happily in Steve’s massive arms and enthusiastically slathering him in dog spit.   
  
    “Grindelwald is a  _ Havanese mix _ ,” Steve managed to get out between sloppy dog kisses. Bucky rolled his eyes.    
  
    “Mixed with what, a wig ?” He wasn’t sure he’d seen a fluffier dog in his life.   
  
    “Barnes, that doesn’t answer what that is,” Sam said, cautiously pointing to what Bucky was holding. Before Bucky could even answer, though, Grindelwald broke free of Steve’s grip and slipped ungracefully to the ground. The little dog bounded across the small distance separating Bucky and Sam from Steve, and Bucky hastily held up his little animal companion to keep it out of harm’s way.   
  
The problem was that the creature floated gently out of his hand and remained in mid-air, bobbing up and down slightly. There was a moment of silence.    
  
    “You got a levitating chinchilla.” Sam’s voice was flat. “You’re getting on Steve’s case for a dog, and you have a levitating chinchilla.”   
  
Bucky was speechless.    
  
    “Black fur, too. Very chic,” Natasha offered, walking down the incline of the plane’s ramp. Steve was gesturing urgently to Grindelwald to return to him, but the little dog was over-excited, running towards the A.I.M. base and letting out a high-pitched bark.    
  
The windows of the building blew out.    
  
Bucky grabbed for his… floating… chinchilla, but no shrapnel was coming their way, and frankly the little guy seemed perfectly happy where he -- she? was.    
  
Steve looked a little embarrassed. “His file says he’s trained only to do that in battle.”    
  
Natasha made an impressed noise. “Looks like he had the right idea.” Near the entrance, three A.I.M. agents had crumpled to the ground, rifles still clutched in hand.    
  
_     “Good boy _ ,” Steve enthused, making the dog come scurrying back over for congratulatory head scratches.    
  
    “And  _ your _ dog has a sonic boom … bark,” Sam said, not even sounding surprised. Why would he be? Life hadn’t been normal since Rogers had outpaced him in DC years ago.    
  
    “He’ll be good. He’ll only do it if we tell him to,  _ won’t you boooy… _ ”    
  
Grindelwald yipped excitedly, and since Steve’s head didn’t explode, they took his word for it.    
  
    “What weirdo powers does your snake have?” Sam sighed, gesturing at the jet.     
  
    “You got a  _ snake _ ?” Bucky asked, feeling his skin crawl.   
  
    “It’ll stay in my room, James,” Nat said soothingly. Bucky made a face.    
  
    “Snakes are creepy, why’d you have to choose a  _ snake _ ?”   
  
    “It was love at first sight,” Nat said, deadpan. Sam, oddly enough, was nodding.    
  
    “Wait’ll you see her, Barnes. She’s real cute.”   
  
Of course Sam and Nat thought snakes were cute. They were  _ weird. _   
  


* * *

  
Grindelwald was curled happily on Steve’s lap, his little legs twitching as he dreamt. The look Steve was giving the small dog was nothing short of soppy; Bucky knew that he didn’t have the strength to say no to that.   
  
And then there was his chinchilla. “Bludger,” Sam had insisted on naming her because she was round and black. “Gotta keep the Harry Potter theme goin’,” he’d said. Bludger was currently bobbing near Sam’s head, and making little squeaks of contentment as he fed her a tiny sliver of apple.    
  
And Bucky? Bucky was looking down at Nat’s newest friend.    
“Her name’s Nagini,” Nat was saying, acting as though  _ a snake wasn’t twined around her arm _ .    
  
    “She’s… beautiful?” Bucky said, looking pained. It’s not that he was afraid of snakes, they just gave him the heebie-jeebies. Steve kept a wide berth, too, he’d noticed.    
“What is she, anyway? Besides unnecessarily massive?”    
  
    “Nagini’s a yellow ball python,” Natasha said, smoothly ignoring Bucky’s comment about her (genuinely huge) new pet. “Would you look at her little puppy mouth?” she continued, her voice dropping into a gentle coo again.    
  
    “Not like any puppy mouth  _ I’ve _ ever seen,” Steve muttered.    
  
    “Barnes, that snake is harmless, man. She won’t hurt yoAAAUUUUUUGH!” Sam was halfway through trying to placate Bucky when a huge silver-grey cat appeared on his lap. It didn’t jump into his lap from the floor, or walk over to them; it literally appeared out of nowhere. Because it had teleported into the plane. The plane which was several thousand feet in the air.    
  
“Oh my god,  _ oh my god _ , I think that took 5 years off my life,” Sam said weakly. The cat purred loudly, curling up immediately into a truly impressive mass of fur. Grindelwald growled softly, but Steve shushed him and the little dog quieted. Bludger rotated in the air to look at the newcomer, but didn’t seem bothered by him.    
  
“This one kept disappearing when we tried to corral him,” Sam explained. “His cage door had some kind of dampening technology on it, kept him from BAMFing out.”   
  
    “ _ Bamf.  _ Wow, Harry Potter and now comic books, Wilson. Definitely  _ not _ a nerd,” Natasha murmured. Steve snorted, reached over to highfive Nat, and, seeing Nagini so close to him, thought better of it.    
  
    “He took a liking to you, huh,” Bucky mused, bending to let the cat sniff at his hand. The creature opened an eye, batted playfully at Bucky’s outstretched hand, and then mewed quietly. His voice was tiny, almost delicate for such a big cat.    
  
    “Dunno  _ why _ ,” Sam muttered, absent-mindedly petting the cat’s fur. “I hate cats.”   
  


* * *

  
    “Can we stop to get Crookshanks a collar?” Sam asked not 20 minutes later.   
  
He left the pet store with over $300 worth of cat goods.   
“Not a _word_ , Barnes. I still don’t like cats. Just... if I gotta have one, he’s gonna be well taken care of. That’s all.”  
  
Bucky graciously didn’t point out that Sam had already started using a baby talk voice when referring to the cat.  
  


* * *

  
Nat’s smugness about having the only ‘normal’ pet lasted a whole 2 days. Then Nagini yawned widely and a tiny jet of flame shot from between her jaws. 

  
    “I’m torn between being proud and being … no, I’m just proud,” Nat insisted, even as she patted out the small fire that had started on the carpet. (She put a tiny pink bow on Nagini's head. It was the only pink item of clothing the others had ever seen her with.)  
  


* * *

  
Steve was laying on his back on the living room floor, very gently using the palm of his hand to bounce Bludger up into the air (her favourite game); the chinchilla rarely touched the ground nowadays, choosing to flail her little legs to move through the air (Sam and Bucky had literally cried laughing the first time she’d done it.)

  
Sam had Nagini draped around his shoulders, both of them content and sleepy in the corner of the couch bathed in sunshine. Sam was reading the newspaper, occasionally moving the python’s tail so that he could see the print. He occasionally read some snippets of the article to her, which Sam claimed that she enjoyed. Bucky and Steve were more than happy to leave him to it.   
  
Natasha was sitting on the ground, rolling a deactivated smoke bomb along the ground for Grindelwald to chase, the small dog skittering ungracefully all over their hardwood floor as he hared after the object. Her voice wasn’t quite as soppy as Steve’s when she called to the dog, but it was a close thing.    
  
Bucky didn’t even wince as Crookshanks’ claws pressed against his neck; he was laying mostly slumped across whatever bit of couch wasn’t occupied by Sam and Nagini, with the cat on his chest. He didn’t mind that Crookshanks was happily kneading his throat; the low purr coming from the animal was lulling him half to sleep.    
  
    “Give kisses,” Natasha murmured behind him. Grindelwald yipped excitedly, racing off to lick at Sam’s ankle (“Thanks, little man. Back at ya.”), Steve’s face (“ _ Augh _ , watch the eye-- aw, I can’t stay mad at you”), and Bucky’s right arm, which was dangling off the edge of the couch cushions (“I know where that tongue’s been, buddy. But thanks.”)   
  
    “Nat,” Steve said, amusement clear in his voice. “It’s cheating to send my dog to do your dirty work for you.”   
  
    “Yeah,” Bucky chimed in, craning his neck to look at her. “Just say you love us like normal people, hey?”   
  
    “I just did,” Nat said simply. Sam sighed, although the sound was more contentment than anything else.   
  
    “Normal people. Man, not even our  _ pets _ are normal,” he said, laughing a little.   
  
    “We should get a house,” Bucky said, sitting up suddenly. Crookshanks, dislodged so unceremoniously from his perch, made a disgruntled sound and disappeared into thin air. (He reappeared by his food bowl, looking very grumpy.)    
  
    “A house?” Steve repeated, his eyes darting between the other three.    
  
    “Yeah. Together. A bigger place, y’know? I mean-- we can barely move in here, and the animals need space, and--”   
  
    “Yo, you had me at ‘a bigger place,’ Barnes,” Sam interrupted.   
  
    “Not a bad idea, ” Natasha hummed thoughtfully. Steve looked like Christmas had come early.    
  
They kind of beamed dopily at each other for a few moments. Then Sam stood and moved towards Bucky, Nagini stirring slightly on his shoulders (behind him, Crookshanks suddenly appeared in his vacated seat.)   
  
    “Nagini, give kisses,” Sam grinned. Bucky sat up and made a face.    
  
    “Please, no.”   
  
    “Just a little kiss.”   
  
    “Snakes are  _ creepy _ , Sam!”   
  
Bucky wouldn’t kiss Nagini (she wasn’t particularly bothered by that), but the other three humans in the room were more than happy to take her place in an ungainly pile of giggling and hugging. It was all rather sickeningly sweet, which is why it was a good thing that the only witnesses were mildly disinterested animals.    
  


* * *

  
Nick Fury peered into the box, placing the lid full of breathing holes to one side. Inside, a tiny rabbit with an unusually dark brown coat looked back, its nose twitching curiously. It didn’t shrink away in fear when Nick tentatively reached in to pet it.   
  
Nick read the note that had been delivered along with the rabbit:   
  
_ Director Fury-- _ _   
_ _   
_ _ I know you like rabbits, so I thought this little guy (I think she’s a girl, actually) would be a good little companion.  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ P.S. Apparently she’s kinda psychic or something? She can sense when someone is untrustworthy. Thought that might be useful. _   
  
Nick carefully lifted the rabbit out of the box; she immediately relaxed into his hands, completely at ease.    
  
Bucky smiled when an unlisted number sent him a picture of the rabbit-- sleeping peacefully on what was clearly Nick Fury’s desk. Beside her was a post-it saying “LOLA SAYS THANKS.”  
  


**Author's Note:**

> My contribution for the Bucky gift exchange. Happy birthday, Bucky!
> 
> ....witcha old ass. <3


End file.
